


Nightmares and Dreamscapes

by cecilkirk



Series: Heliocentric [1]
Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Nightmare, Ryden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilkirk/pseuds/cecilkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a dream, a fear, a wish</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares and Dreamscapes

It was something picturesque.

Brendon knew it was a dream—it was too orderly, too perfect around the edges. Somewhere in his mind he knew Ryan wasn’t really dying, that he wasn’t really perched on a bedside chair, that the hospital fluorescents weren’t really branding his eyes.

And yet--

And yet his heart ached, true and real, and he could feel tears clogging his throat. The contents of his body felt like they had plummeted into his toes. He felt like he was sinking, falling apart.

Ryan’s face…

Somehow even in his dream, Ryan’s face looked completely persuasive. Pale skin, sunken cheeks, eyes closed by impossibly heavy eyelids—maybe only for now, but some deeply-seated voice told Brendon it was forever.

Even the hand Brendon clutched was beginning to bleed its heat into Brendon’s hand, and Brendon knew it would be irreplaceable.

Bordering logic told him it was all prevarication, but it fell on the deaf ears of his buried, humming, untouchable emotion.

With a sharp intake of breath, Brendon awakes.

He’s not in any hospital room; he’s in his bed, _their_ bed, facing the wall. He lets his breathing even out, reminding himself of reality one thought at a time, layered for solidity:

_It’s not real. Ryan is okay._

Surreptitiously he makes sure his eyes are dry, clears his throat quietly. Behind him, the mattress dips as weight shuffles. An exhausted grin forms on Brendon’s lips; he had nothing to worry about. He turns over, wrestling with knotted sheets to face Ryan. But—

Brendon’s lungs close up. No air can get in or out.

The only thing beside him is his dog.

Brendon sits up, spurring vertigo. He blinks, blinks, trying to pry his lungs open and mute his thoughts but

( _how could he have been so wrong?_ )

it doesn’t work. His fingers grip the sheets for purchase, trying to find something to grasp onto as he feels himself spiraling, falling, plummeting, and yet his lungs are only getting shallower and shallower. How? How could he have forgotten? How could he—

Suddenly, light.

Brendon is aware of the wheeze in his short, useless breaths.

“Hey,”

says the figure in the doorway, the dog running past his ankles and far away,

“are you okay, Brendon?”

Brendon blinks, blinks. But his lungs grow even smaller and his chest begins to tighten, his breathing so loud it frightens him which only shrinks his lungs, and—

“Hey, hey,” Ryan says, crawling onto the bed. “It’s okay, Brendon. It’s okay.”

He’s sitting far from Brendon to give him space, to let him breathe. Ryan looks at Brendon, eyes flickering with panic but Brendon doesn’t look away. His fingers loosen on the sheets; his ribs loosen; he can begin to breathe again. In, out—

“It’s okay, Bren. It’s okay.”

\--evenly, smoothly.

Brendon closes his eyes and lets his lungs fill to capacity. He holds the air, letting it fill every crevice before releasing it. He swallows, opens his eyes. Ryan inches forward, looking imploringly. Brendon’s eyes inexplicably brim with tears.

“Bren, Bren, it’s okay,” Ryan says, kneeling in front of him. After a moment, after Brendon calms down again and wipes his eyes: “Are you okay?”

Brendon inhales, exhales, appreciating the life in his lungs. He appreciates the life in Ryan—warm skin, rosy cheeks, wide eyes. He appreciates his life with Ryan.

“Just had a bad dream.”

The words squeak around tightness in his throat; the sound is grating to his own ears.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Brendon barks. “No, I—I don’t.”

“Okay,” Ryan says. He puts all his forward weight on his knees, digging a knuckle into the bed for balance. He kisses Brendon’s forehead, pressing his hand to Brendon’s cheek. “I love you, Brendon.”

And Brendon can feel it all happening again—his breath skips and stutters in his lungs, his eyes prick—and he doesn’t know what to do but he doesn’t want to feel helpless, subjected, so he acts outwardly. He wraps his arms around Ryan, reaches as far as possible to bring him in as close as he can. He presses his nose into Ryan’s neck, breathing him in.

“I love you too.”

He feels Ryan’s fingertips find his skin like dots of warmth and love and comfort. He lets his thoughts recollect, stack, solidify:

_It’s not real. Ryan is okay._

_It’s all okay._


End file.
